Lawmakers are quietly introducing legislation that would restrict exports of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, as Congress remains deadlocked over funding for the Department of Homeland Security. This is a move to treat the technology like arms sales and recognize the critical importance of AI in military applications.
The AI Surveillance Act, introduced late last year by Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), would give the Secretary of Commerce the power to block the sale of certain advanced AI chips to companies from China, Iran, Russia and other “countries of concern.” The House Foreign Affairs Committee introduced the bill in January, and the House could vote on it in the coming weeks.
The bill is a direct response to concerns that Chinese AI companies are using U.S. technology to advance China’s AI field and develop military applications. U.S. officials have claimed that the Chinese AI company DeepSeek is running on tens of thousands of chips from the U.S. company NVIDIA that it acquired, circumventing existing export controls. The AI Surveillance Act aims to close these loopholes and tighten export controls.
The bill would allow companies not on the blacklist to buy low-speed chips without a Commerce Department license, but sales of more advanced chips would require government approval. Congress would have the power to approve or block any sale or lease. Importantly, this bill would revoke all current licenses.
Mast, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the bill would elevate chip trading to the level of arms trading in terms of the level of oversight over it. Meanwhile, we will quickly get America’s cutting-edge AI technology into the hands of trusted allies and partners.
Leaders of six influential Congressional committees that oversee foreign policy, intelligence, and cybersecurity endorsed the bill and expressed strong support.
Keith Self, chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs and Europe Subcommittee, emphasized why the AI Surveillance Act is needed, saying, “chips that train frontier models can just as easily enhance military targeting, mass surveillance, and cyber operations.” “If you are an enemy of the United States, you should not have access to the best technology in the world.”
One Chinese dissident I interviewed for this column described the bill as a “decisive move” that would bring the United States into line with the Chinese Communist Party’s policy of keeping valuable information out of enemy hands.
Dr. Huang Kun, who once advised the Chinese Communist Party’s Standing Committee on national defense before defecting to the West, told me that Chinese military leaders want to use U.S. AI technology to build future quantum computers that are exponentially more powerful than existing computers. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could hack any system in seconds, posing an existential threat to U.S. military capabilities.
China not only acquires American technology, but also takes advantage of the globalized American education system, sending students to study and work in the United States and then return to China with all their knowledge.
Just last month, quantum physicist You Chenglong returned to China after more than a decade in the United States to take up a full-time professorship at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in Chengdu. After completing his PhD at Louisiana State University in 2019 and breaking new ground in quantum photonics, You is bringing back important expertise to strengthen China’s scientific ambitions.
During his time in the United States, Yu’s research pushed measurement techniques to the forefront of national and scientific possibilities, opening the door to advances in ultra-high precision navigation and gravitational wave detection that are both military and scientifically important.
He collaborated with major U.S. government facilities such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology and pioneered experiments that use multiple photons to detect tiny changes with greater precision than traditional techniques.
Mr. Yeo steps into a circle of elite scientists personally selected by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to shape the future of weapons. Not coincidentally, in January, the People’s Liberation Army Daily announced that quantum technology has enabled the military to gather critical military intelligence from the vast public internet. Meanwhile, at least 10 experimental quantum cyberwarfare tools are in development, and some are already being used in real-world missions.
A team of Chinese scientists who honed their expertise on the world stage are leading this ambitious project in a state-of-the-art supercomputer-powered laboratory at the National Defense University. As PLA Daily reported, the core of their mission is quantum sensing. The return of physicists like Yeo, equipped with America’s cutting-edge knowledge to enable ultra-high-precision navigation, will accelerate the People’s Liberation Army’s efforts.
“Keep in mind that the Chinese Communist Party’s spotlight is on the PLA, not the people,” said Cao Zhang, a former PLA officer who defected to the West in the early 2000s. He stressed that military priorities always outweigh civilian needs when it comes to Western technology. For example, Cao noted that navigation systems from “major US EV manufacturers” were powering China’s self-driving attack platforms “long before Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers got their hands on them.” This is just one example of how military interests take precedence.
This dynamic is once again on display as the Chinese military benefits from the combined power of cutting-edge chips and older processors. The latest model released by Tsinghua University and marked PLA-affiliated demonstrates this advantage.
Chinese researchers have used NVIDIA’s most powerful chips to create a synthetic data pipeline to train AI models without using real-world data. Their aim was to develop a replacement for data commonly used in AI training. The result, described in the scientific paper, is SynthSmith, a platform that generates artificial data at every stage of AI development.
This breakthrough has enabled Chinese researchers to build a digital world that faithfully reflects reality, where trusted data is an essential asset for military AI models operating in rare and sensitive environments. The project paper highlights the pivotal role of the NVIDIA H20 chip in driving experimentation.
A senior Japanese AI engineer commented anonymously that if the paper’s findings are accurate, the People’s Liberation Army has made a “tremendous qualitative leap.” The engineer noted that the Chinese military may now feel complacent that “most battlefield intelligence comes from areas like Ukraine and Venezuela, where the People’s Liberation Army suspects that the United States has used cutting-edge AI technology,” confusing observers.
Asked whether strict restrictions would give China an advantage, former People’s Liberation Army officers and Chinese dissidents dismissed concerns. They noted that if the PLA had a better option, it would have already adopted it, but “nothing can match the spark of American innovation.”
The AI Surveillance Act aims to protect that innovation, and it’s never too early.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
